


Missing

by funkyorange



Series: Connor/Reid [4]
Category: Criminal Minds, Primeval
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, M/M, but it isn't graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 20:09:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6768268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/funkyorange/pseuds/funkyorange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer Reid's world ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Missing

**Author's Note:**

> Two things; 1, I've been trying out a new tense style. Let me know if you like it! 2, This is non-chronological to my series. It takes place just after Emily reappears in the Team's lives. It's a way after all the others, and the next in the series will take place before this one. I'll probably move it around when the other one is written. Maybe.

Spencer is ready for this ‘pasta night’. He’s going to be a little late if he doesn’t set off in the next 6.5 minutes, but he’s still hunting for his favourite shirt. He last wore it the night that he and Connor got engaged. It’s probably right at the back of his wardrobe, as Connor had been on clean-up duty the next morning (it was only fair, as he’d been the one to strip Spencer of his shirt and throw it across the room so enthusiastically). So he’s not really ready, ready but everything else is prepared. There’s a bottle of red wine that he knows is JJ’s favourite, a six-pack of Hotch’s favourite beer, and for Emily, a collection of the old art films they’d watched together, before. It’s a peace offering, an olive branch that he hopes they’ll take.

 

And then his phone rings, and his world ends.

 

He’s jolted out of his stupor eleven hours, thirty minutes and twenty-six seconds later. His alarm for work, set at half five as always. He stands. His legs feel like jello, his eyes sore and reddened. The shower blasts water just on the side of cool, how he’s taken his showers ever since he was a child.  
_Connor hates that._  
Memories pour over him. The first time they showered together, at nineteen, with Connor jumping out of the shower shrieking because _“It’s colder than Scarborough in the middle of December! Showers are for warmth!”_ and getting them caught by Connor’s parents. Their little fights over, if they did shower together, whose preferred temperature the water would be.  
He steps out of the shower, dries and dresses. Breakfast next. Two cups of coffee, non-dairy creamer and two sugars in each before he starts on food. A banana, which he hates the taste of but eats anyway, and a small bowl of cereal. He usually buys a pastry on the way into work, but he doesn’t want one today. The only reason he’s eating breakfast at all is because he knows he can’t exist on coffee alone for a whole day. Work bag ready; spare underwear, shirt and socks just in case of a long local case. His go-bag is set by the door for long-distance. He wants to hope for a case in Vegas, to see where he and Connor spent time together, or in New York, where they spent five days sightseeing. He doesn’t feel anything. He finds his keys, wallet and badge, straps on his gun, and walks out of the door. He locks it. Walks down the hallway, past the elevator and to the stairs.  
His phone rings when he gets to the subway.  
“Reid.”  
“It’s Garcia.” She doesn’t sound frosty, but she’s not speaking with her usual warmth. It takes him a moment to remember the missed ‘pasta night’. The fog in his brain is making him slow, rolling over his memories, his thought processes. He wonders if maybe soon he’ll forget how to breathe.  
“We have a case. We’re meeting at the airport.”  
He turns around and heads home to collect his go-bag.

The team are all gathered when he arrives. Hotch has taken a window seat, as has Morgan, with Emily and JJ next to them respectively. Garcia has taken a seat across from the window and Rossi the seat next to that. They’re sat in an insular little circle, and he feels to sit near them would be intruding. He takes the couch at the end of the room, as far as he can get away from them. He feels safer here.  
“Case file for you,” Rossi says, passing it along. He nods. He doesn’t feel up to talking.  
Garcia begins her presentation as he’s reading. “Three women have been found dead in New York. Jenny Wight, Marsha Dickinson, and Lisa Boyd. Each were,” here she pulls a face, “missing several extremities and in Lisa Boyd’s case, a whole arm.”  
“It says here that it looks like they were tied up before they died,” JJ points out. “Is he keeping them?”  
“They each went missing four days before their deaths, yes.”  
“Nothing here indicates they went without nutrition for that long,” Spencer says. His voice is flat, emotionless, tired. He flinches at how gravelly he sounds. “The UNSUB is giving them food and water.”  
“That shows he cares,” Hotch frowns. “But the removal of the body parts doesn’t say that; it’s pre-mortem. Neither does the sexual assault.”  
“So it’s torture.” Emily, this time.  
“Unless it’s his kink,” Rossi pipes up.  
“So-called ‘disability porn’ is gaining popularity. His fetish could be either the removal of the body part, or the body after the extremity is removed.” His voice shakes less this time.  
“Or both.” Morgan this time.  
Spencer tunes out. He knows he should listen, should be wanting to catch these girls’ killer, make him pay for his crimes, but all he can think about is the warmth in Connor’s brown eyes and his “we’ll talk on Monday” three nights ago. It’s Monday today. He wants to hope Connor will call, greet him with a cheery Britishism that’ll make him laugh, even though it’s the 709th time he’s heard it this year, and over 3-millionth in all. But he still can’t feel anything. It’s been over 48 hours, the crucial time; it hardly applies to Connor’s situation, however. His job means that when you go missing through an Anomaly, you’re dead, or will likely never return to your own time.  
His fiancé is most probably dead. It’s still sinking in.  
The others have finished talking now, and they’re all making themselves comfortable for the flight. They’ll go over the information again before they land, to make sure it’s fresh in everyone’s heads. He settles into the couch, long legs reaching the other arm, face nestled into his hands, halo of honey-brown hair a pillow, and tries to sleep.

Spencer loves New York. He thinks it’s a place he’d live, if he wasn’t so tied to Quantico. Connor loves it, too; he said after their visit he’d fallen in love with the sights and sounds of the city. They’d stood in famous spots, shopped in famous stores, stood at the Top of the Rock at sunset. Their visit had been romantic and wonderful and tiring, and they’d left with heavy hearts.  
He won’t see any of that this time, though. He’ll be stuck in a sweaty room with his fellow profilers in a police station that’ll be filled with panic. As he watches the skyline from the comfort of the backseat of the SUV, he wrenches his mind to the case. He can’t let his own feelings get in the way of finding the UNSUB who hurt these girls, and will likely hurt more before they find him. He’s headed for the morgue with Rossi, but they’re dropping Emily and Derek off at the crime scene on their way. He’s quiet, and so are they; he wonders if they’d be talking about him if he weren’t here. It’s quite possible.  
_I just want this case to be over._

It is, now.  
They’ve solved the case, and better, they’ve solved it with enough evidence to keep the bastard locked away for a long, long time. Jay Costello had been a lawyer whose disabled wife, Susie, had gone missing six years ago. The trigger for his crimes had been finding out she hadn’t been taken, but had left him for another woman. He had tortured, raped and killed bisexual women, amputating their arms because that was what initially attracted him to his ex-wife, as substitutes for his rage against her.  
He’s now waiting for his trial.  
Spencer hasn’t broken down yet. He expected it to happen when he saw the crime scene photos, or saw Marie Beale, the almost-victim, reunited with her family. He wants it to be at home, in bed, with ice-cream. Full dairy, because no substitute will do.  
They’re all at the airport, and Garcia is playing a game on her phone, Morgan has his headphones turned up to full volume, JJ and Prentiss are playing Snap! and Hotch and Rossi are quietly chatting. He thinks it’s about Hotch’s son Jack. Spencer himself is sat on a seat watching the souvenir store. There’s keychains, tee shirts, mugs, all the usual tourist junk that he and Connor buy every time they are together on vactation. Connor bought a mug last time.  
Spencer stands and makes his way to the store. Once inside, he locates what he wants; a small snow globe with the Statue of Liberty inside it and one with the Empire State building. He also snaps up a Top of the Rock postcard. It doesn’t come to much, but it’s what he wants. What Connor would have wanted. He’s not sure why he’s buying these things. It’s a Spencer-and-Connor thing, not something he does alone. He never brings things back from cases with him.  
He manages to stop the tears he feels coming until he’s sat on the jet.  
They start silently, creeping down his cheeks and dripping onto his hands, clasped on his lap. They’re fast and heavy but he doesn’t sob, doesn’t gulp for air; he learnt as a child to keep his cries silent. And then he suddenly can’t breathe because _Connor is missing, Connor might be dead_ and his cries go from silent to ugly, rasping inhalations that burst out of him in whimpers. He notices the team circle around, asking what’s wrong and if they can help and it makes him cry harder. He can feel himself shaking. For ten long minutes he cries and sobs and at one point he’s pretty sure he even screams, and then it’s over. The outpouring of the built up emotion is done, the well run dry. The pain has risen through the numbness, broken like a wave over him, and now it has seeped back into his skin, a current running just underneath it, pumped through his veins with his blood, pulsing with every beat of his heart.  
A tissue is pressed into his hand, and he wipes his face. A glass of water handed over, and he drinks. A non-verbal question asked, and he responds.  
“Connor’s been missing for almost a week.” He doesn’t tell them it’s been five days, twelve hours and fifty six minutes since the Anomaly closed behind his lover. He can't vocalise it. “I found out just before we left on this case.”  
“I’m so sorry,” Garcia breathes.  
“Do they have any leads?” Morgan asks.  
“I’m not allowed to know. He went missing in action. What he and his team were working on was so classified, even people who work in the same department as them can’t know about it.” He hides behind facts; it’s what he’s always done. “Connor and Abby went missing at the same time. Their families have been asked to decide what to do with their possessions.”  
“Is there anything we can do?” Hotch has been better at this than any of them since Haley died.  
“Help me find somewhere to keep Connor’s things. I have to keep them. Even if he’s dead, I just…” he trails off and wipes his eyes again. “His clothes can stay in my wardrobe and his computers in my office, but I don’t know where to put anything else. He’s got these,” he laughs wetly, “these little bobbleheads, they’re ridiculous. A Spider-Man and a Hulk. And when he’d stay over and I had to go on a case he’d slip them into my go-bag, or if I was working late in the office he’d hide them in there somewhere when I wasn’t looking.” The tears start up again. “And his DVDs, I can’t throw them away even though they won’t work in my player because what if he does come back and I’ve thrown everything he owns away? His and Abby’s apartment will likely be sold, he might be replaced at work, his pets are going to have to stay with friends…I can’t take anything else away from him if he does come back!”  
“When will his things arrive?” Emily asks, gentle as he’s ever heard her.  
“A few days. By the weekend, almost certainly.”  
“Then Sunday morning, we’ll be over,” JJ says firmly. “We’ll help you sort everything. You can keep some stuff with us if it won’t all fit, Will won’t mind.”  
Garcia nods so enthusiastically that her hair clip, in the shape of a ladybird and almost as big as her hand, nearly falls off into her tea. “If there’s anything you need finding from his computers, I can look,” she promises. “Pictures of the two of you or anything like that.”  
“My mansion is big enough for a few boxes,” Rossi chips in, “and I can always keep DVDs with me if there’s no room.”  
“Thank you,” Spencer murmurs. His eyes are red and sore from crying, his hands are still shaking, and the fear and horror and worry and sadness of the past few days has not yet let his mind settle for even a moment, but here, surrounded by almost all of the people he loves the most, he dares to hope that he will be okay.


End file.
